Irshad Manji, as always, offers such a simplified, salient critique of the issue at hand--because really it isn't all that difficult, or at least it shouldn't be. Amazingly enough--though perhaps it shouldn't have--I sat in on a meeting recently for a group that I volunteer with doing Jewish-Muslim outreach in Chicago, and one of the Jewish members railed against Manji as an extremist (she had spoken recently in the area) that the group had an obligation to protest. Strange days indeed when the feminist, lesbian Canadian religious critics are being framed as the extremists.
It is certainly problematic to have any type of ideal of a foreign policy based on ethical considerations and ignore such a tragic historic event. Perhaps most disturbing is how opponents of the resolution have explicitly stated that their opposition is through Real Politik type considerations. Fundamentally put, why are some genocides ok for us to recognize and others aren't? Particularly in an age in which the US has made some semblance of an effort to come to terms with its own failings: Japanese internment, slavery, Tuskegee experiments, etc...We certainly can't ever expect to be successful in promoting democratic ideals abroad if we have yet to face those same realities stateside. 

Micheal and Andrew, thanks for speaking the truth on the Armenian Genocide.   Too bad the media is playing this Demc. vs. Republican, but House Resolution 106, Armenian Genocide resolution, is bi partisan.  What is more easy to do, help somebody to admite the truth or cover for someone to lie?   By not passing the resolution US will help Turkey to cover up the Armenian Genocide and that is for a superpower is unfortunet.  And you are right American Jewish and Armenian solidarity is running high and I hope it gets stronger.  

Keep up the great work!  

It is naive to think that the Jewish lobbies have no role in the passage/failure of the Armenian Genocide Resolution in U.S. Congress. The Armenian Genocide Resolution can in fact pass on its own legs with or without the help of Jewish and Israeli lobbies. But, it certainly can NOT pass if they work against it (as they always do [very disturbing indeed]). Furthermore, it is crystal clear that the Armenian Genocide Resolution would be a slam-dunk in Congress if these above-mentioned dark forces come to the right side of this moral issue.

Another interesting observation: Contrary to what Turks say today, they have already made an admission of guilt many years ago; The excerpts below is further evidence that the Turks have in fact acknowledged their role in the Armenian Genocide from the start.

So the question is: why does the U.S. and Israel (and most influential Jewish and Israeli lobbies) continue to buck the trend by double-killing the Armenian genocide victims? ( numerous civilized countries and countless organizations have recognized the Genocide already). Please, No realpolitik excuse this time! Just a good debate is appreciated.

Turkish Leaders Acknowledge the Armenian Genocide

“The fact that what happened in 1915 was a mass murder was not even a subject of argument from the viewpoint of the actors of the time, with Mustafa Kemal at their head. The main subject of discussion was about how to punish ‘Turks.’ ”

 

Dr. Taner Akcam
University of Michigan
1915 Legends and Realities, Radikal, May 25 2003

.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In a communication to General Kazim Karabekir, on May 6 1920 about attacking the fledgling Armenian Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder of the Turkish Republic) said:

· “The Christian world, especially America will turn against us, associating such an attack the possibility of ‘a new Armenian massacre’”[i]

Kazim Karabekir, Istiklal Harbimiz [Our war of Independence], 1969.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: On September 22 1919, from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to Major-General Harbord, the head of the American Military Mission to Armenia:

· “Kemal used the 800,000 figure to describe the number of Armenian victims. He, in fact, ‘disapproved of the Armenian massacres.’ (Ermeni kitlini o da takbih ediyordu).”[ii]

“Rauf Orbayin Hatiralari” Yakin Tarhimiz [Memoires of Rauf Orbay; Our Contemporary History], 1962.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: On April 24 1920, the day after the inauguration of the new parliament of the Turkish Republic, Ataturk stated:

· “The World War I massacres against the Armenians (Ermenilere karşi kitliam) [was] a shameful act (fazahat).”[iii]

“Ataturkün Söylev ve Demerçleri 1918-1938” (The Speeches and Statements of Atatürk) vol.1, 1945.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In an interview with a French publicist he (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) inveighed against the Ittihadist chiefs, whom he blamed for the crime against the Armenians:

· “They, [the Ittihadist] and their accomplices…deserve the gallows. Why are the Allies delaying having all these rascals hung?”[iv]

(Maurice Prax, “Constantinople: Lectures pour tous,” 1920).

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk:

· “The massacre and deportation of Armenians was the work of a small committee who had seized the power.”[v]

“Rauf Orbayin Hatiralari” Yakin Tarhimiz [Memoires of Rauf Orbay; Our Contemporary History], 1962.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In an interview (Los Angeles Examiner, August 1, 1926) with Swiss journalist, Emile Hildebrand, Ataturk said:

· “These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been accountable for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the republican rule.”[vi]

Turkish Court Martial: To judge Talaat and the other criminals who participated in organizing the genocide of 1915, a Turkish Court Martial was formed on March 8, 1919.

The following is an abridged version of the accusation against them:

· “…the essential point which emerges from the open inquiry is that the crimes committed during the deportations of the Armenians in different locations and at different times were not isolated and local cases. A central force, organized by and composed of persons mentioned here, premeditated and executed them, through secret orders or verbal instructions.

The court declares unanimously the guilt of the charges mentioned earlier of the accused hereby named, members of the General Council which represent the moral person of the Ittihad. According to the disposition of the law, the Court declares the penalty of death against Talaat, Enver, Djemal and Dr. Nazim, and forced labor for 15 years against Djavid, Moustafa Cherif and Moussa Kiazim.”[vii]

(Dr. Taner Akcam, Dialogue Across an International Divide: Essays Towards a Turkish-Armenian Dialogue, 2001).

The Great Free-Mason Loge of Turkey: The Great Free-Mason Loge of Turkey voted the following motion:

· “The venerable Assembly reached the conclusion that during the last war, brothers Talaat Pasha, Midhat Chukri, Hussein Dhajid, Behaeddine Chekir, forced compatriots to leave their homes, had them assassinated, and stole their goods, and for these reasons they are expelled from the Masonic ranks.”

c2. The Turkish Journal Yeni Stamboul [viii]

General Vehib Pasha (Bukat): Commander of the Turkish Third Army

· “The massacre and destruction of the Armenians and the plunder and pillage of their goods were the result of decisions reached by Ittihad’s Central Committee…The atrocities were carried out under a program that was determined upon and involved a definite case of premeditation.”[ix]

Records of the 1919 Turkish Military Tribunal

Mustafa Arif (Deymer): Interior Minister 1918-19

· “Unfortunately, our wartime leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to exterminate the Armenians and they did exterminate them. This decision was taken by the Central Committee of the Young Turks and was implemented by the Government…The atrocities committed against the Armenians reduced our country to a gigantic slaughterhouse.”[x]

(VAKIT, 13 Dec. 1918)

Halide Edib: American Educated Feminist Writer

· “…Indeed, we tried to destroy the Armenians through methods peculiar to the Middle Ages. We are living today the saddest and darkest times of our national life.”[xi]

(VAKIT, 22 Oct. 1918)

Dr. Taner Akcam: University of Michigan, The Long Denied Armenian Genocide, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2003.

· “Turks and their history books still cannot accept that there was an organized mass murder of Armenians between 1915 and 1917. Perhaps that is because so many of the murderers and looters were also heroes of the founding of the modern Turkish republic.

“The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, spoke on the subject dozens of times; he condemned the massacres, which he called infamous, and demanded that those who were guilty be punished.”[xii]

Falih Rifik Atay, a close friend and confidant of Ataturk, a former Ittihadist, and Kemalist publicist:

· When discussing the persecution of World War I Armenian massacres, he too saw fit to characterize them as “genocide,” using exactly this composite Greco Latin term, at the same time lamenting the fact that there were:

“…alternative remedies [to the Armenian problem]; why incur the risk of dishonoring the name of the nation? Mustafa Kemal too was against the genocide.”[xiii]

Halil Berktay: Professor of History at the University of Sabanci in Istanbul

· “I believe that things will change. For decades we have been putting Turkish Opinion to sleep with the same lullabies. Meanwhile there are a ton of documents providing the sad reality…I even cried upon discovering certain clichés. In Turkey, our youth grow up sheltered. Later in life when some go abroad to study, they discover the reality. For me, the discovery at Yale University was very traumatizing. We caused the death of at least 600 000 people in ten months. If we are not racists, we should be feeling the profoundness of such horror.”[xiv]

(L’Express, 09-11-2000, The Armenian Question: Resolving a taboo.)

STOP IMAGINING JUST LOOK AT TURKEY!
http://lalettre.hayway.org/protected/en/communique00010200.html
Sent to The Economist : Saturday, February 09, 2008
Imagine Nazi Rule in Turkey, surviving for decades, with the chauvinist
Young Turk regime and ideology defeated but quickly revived after WWI
with western headgear replacing the Young Turk Fez! Imagine then a
"reform/Islamist Nationalist Turk" (call him M-abdulah Gul-bach or
Ragib Erdogab) coming to power in the late 1990s and ...
Then STOP IMAGINING and just look at Turkey! Having committed massacres
in the 19th century and Genocide in the 20th century against its
Armenian, Assyrian and Greek (Christian) populations wiping them and
their entire civilisations out almost completely (from 25% of Ottoman
population in 1900 to less than 0.25% now after a 100 years when it
should have stayed at least static even without any growth but without
mass slaughter either!), having been defeated in WWI but, unlike the
Nazi state and criminals, not dismantled, punished or prosecuted, all
its governments since 1918 have denied and distorted the fact of their
genocidal past and continue to do so with impunity up to the present,
even enjoying full support from the likes of the Economist, the UK and
the US, with occasional mild criticism. It maintains an authoritarian,
virulently nationalist and now Islamist government which prosecutes
its own journalists, publishers and Nobel Prize winning authors for
"insulting Turkishness", that is the very few who dare or are brave
enough to speak the truth about Turkey's criminal past in general or
refer to the Armenian Genocide!
Furthermore, this unpunished and unreformed staunchly chauvinist
nationalist Turkey, heavily militarised and armed to its teeth,
is invading at will (Cyprus, 1973, Iraq, the Kurds repeatedly...) or
threatening to invade and bullying its other large and small neighbours
(Greece in the Aegean and Armenia ever since its independence in
1991)... . It is blockading Armenia and keeping the border with it
closed (the only closed border in Europe) and refusing to establish
diplomatic relations with it until it meets Turkey's various bullying
preconditions, such as accepting that it - Armenia - committed Genocide
against Turkey and apologises to it!
The Economist has never exposed Turkey's heinous criminal past
properly, the murder of 1.5 million Armenians and their civilisation,
or its present unacceptable authoritarian regime and its internal
repression or external bullying, especially towards Armenia.
In fact the Economist is one of the main advocates of its membership
of European Union and other democratic organisations.
Yet the very same Economist is devoting hypocritical and false
editorials and comments about the apparent dangers emanating from
Putin's Russia, of all things over the Katyn massacres, when the
Russian government is on record for accepting the Stalinist era crime;
just because some cranky old Soviet era General has written an article
or a book denying the involvement of the Stalinist era NKVD!
What rank hypocrisy and warped Disraelian anti-Russian propaganda. The
Economists agenda is a new cold war against Russia so any petty and
disgusting lie will do to paint Russia in cold war distorted shades.
Equally, the same warped ideology still needs the real
authoritarian/unreformed even barbarian Turkey as a buffer against
Russia so will go to any length to protect it.
The Economist, like the British government, has no credibility or
any constructive European ideas but peddling the same old, warped
and now bankrupt cold war rhetoric.